


Price of Genius

by OnceUponASunsetDream



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mind overload, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Past Drug Use, Sick Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 18:44:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1438858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnceUponASunsetDream/pseuds/OnceUponASunsetDream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft had known, right from the beginning, that his baby brother was strange, even for the son of two very bright and odd parents and the younger brother of a child genius.</p><p>There was a price one paid for genius. Mycroft paid it but Sherlock paid far more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Price of Genius

Mycroft had known, right from the beginning, that his baby brother was strange, even for the son of two very bright and odd parents and the younger brother of a child genius.   
   
From the time he was just a few days old he would suffer horrible fits where he would just scream and scream for hours, horrible heartbreaking, bone-chilling screams. Mother would sing and read and rock her baby to no avail until she was reduced to her own terrified tears that the young baby's eyes were not able to shed. Father would rock the baby and speak soothingly in his low gentle voice until he too was reduced to tears.   
   
Mycroft was the only one with an idea of what was happening to the tiny boy. He himself was prone to teeter on the edge of similar fits but had never succumbed. He approached his brother from where he was screaming and whimpering inside his crib and gently stroked his fingers down the tiny anguished features, speaking slowly, monotonously, gently digging his small fingers into the tense muscles around his brother's neck and head until the tiny, slightly premature baby finally fell into an exhausted sleep.  
   
As he grew, Sherlock Holmes was still prone to the screaming fits and they discovered another way to deal with them. Mummy and Mycroft had managed to find a solution that worked better and faster than most. They had found a very heavy woolen blanket and wrapped his flailing limbs firmly so he looked like some kind of human burrito. When he didn't stop screaming Mycroft removed all and any form of light in the room while Mummy stroked Sherlock's hair. Once Sherlock's screams had dulled to whimpers, Mycroft turned his baby brother on his stomach and massaged the muscles in his neck until Sherlock was rendered almost boneless.  
   
Finally, by the time Sherlock Holmes was twelve, already a brilliant and incredible child, he was able to phrase what happened to him when he succumbed to the fits. And so, Mycroft was able to help. He taught his brother to meditate, taught him how to shield his mind, how to detach himself from the world around him and above all, how to remain sane.  
   
Having learnt control, Sherlock was able to live his relatively normal life, despite his sociopathic tendencies and above average intellect. He made himself a life and made some friends, if they could really be called that, or maybe just people that Sherlock had managed to be fond of. He still had Bad days of course but they could be taken care of by the meditation Mycroft taught him or by solitude or if it was especially bad, Mycroft, with all his cameras would know it was a Bad day and, if necessary, come and help him out.  
   
The day Sherlock met John was a Bad day as ware most the days after but Mycroft kept an eye on him and even kidnapped John as he had Lestrade when they had first met, to gauge their attitude, intentions and thoughts towards his baby brother. When Lestrade and the others had invaded his home Sherlock had very nearly snapped. If it weren't for the case which had suddenly clicked into place in his mind he would have had a fit. But he suppressed it and managed to carry on…until now. Another Bad day. A very Bad day.  
   
Lestrade, Donovan and Anderson had come to 221b Baker St for something about a case but as soon as Sherlock walked through the door they were speaking. Asking. Talking. Noise. High. Low. Up. Down. Upturned collar. Scuffed shoes. Dirt. Hair. Speck. Sun. Light. Light. Light. Noise. Noise. Noise.  
   
Sherlock shook his head, eyes squeezing shut as he staggered into his living room. "Sherlock, are you alright?"  
   
Alright. Satisfactory. Adequate. Decent. Fit. Good. Okay. Sufficient. Concern. Anxiety. Worry. No one worries. Except Mycroft. Diet. Non-diet. Apple. Milk. Food. Fruit. Grain. Seed. Soil. Water. Nourishment.   
   
"Sherlock!"   
   
Sherlock fell to his knees, head bowed, long fingers twisting and pulling violently at his hair as he whimpered and sobbed. "Stop, stop make it stop!" his voice had risen to a shriek by the end and no one in the room had any idea what to make of it. The usually strong, arrogant detective crouched on the ground, moaning and in obvious distress although no one knew why.  
   
"What's happening to him?" Donovan screamed as Anderson stepped back against the wall, a look of shock on his face.  
   
"I'll call Mycroft." John decided suddenly, whipping out his phone and dialing Mycroft's number.   
   
"Something's wrong with Sherlock." John began as soon as Mycroft answered the phone. He then told Mycroft everything that had happened and hung up with a small beep. "Mycroft'll be here in about five or ten minutes. He said not to touch him and to close the blinds."   
   
The others in the room proceeded to do just that, not even Donovan or Anderson complained, both trying to close a particularly stubborn curtain shut. Mycroft arrived sooner than anyone expected, storming up the stairs and shoving John and Lestrade away from his younger sibling. To their shock, Mycroft folded his knees and knelt before Sherlock and drew the younger man's upper body into his lap.  
   
"John. Go into Sherlock's room. On his bed there will be a heavy grey blanket. Fetch it and bring it here." Mycroft said in a low soothing yet commanding voice which John immediately obeyed. Mycroft pinned his brothers arms and then his legs with this own as he waited for John to return with the blanket. Mycroft deftly cocooned his little brother in the heavy blanket, replacing Sherlock's head in his lap. He carefully lay one hand over Sherlock's eyes and the other carded slowly through his curls. It still took the consulting detective a good half hour to calm, his occasional whimpers escalating to screams and sobs only to be hushed by his brother's low monotonous voice speaking French which only he and Sherlock knew. Even after his voice had fallen silent, Sherlock's limbs still made attempts to thrash and he dug his head almost violently into his brother's legs as though he was attempting to force his head through Mycroft's legs and smash it into the floor.   
   
Finally Sherlock fell silent and still. Mycroft sighed, his body sagging against the couch behind him arms still around his brother. "It was a bad one." Mycroft murmured, seeming to himself.   
   
"What just happened?" Anderson demanded.  
   
Donovan nodded fervently. "And who the hell are you?"  
   
Mycroft looked up at them, the icy stare enough to make them falter. "I? I am Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's elder brother. And that? That is what my brother and I refer to as the price we pay for genius."  
   
"The price you pay for genius?" Donovan repeated sardonically.  
   
Mycroft glared up at her and then at the other occupants of the room. "I will tell you what happened to him and consequently a great deal of our childhood but if a single word leaves these walls I will personally ensure that you are discredited and you never achieve a decent job again." Mycroft looked so threatening at that moment, even with his little brother's head in his lap and no one dared argue.   
   
Mycroft sighed and tightened his grip on the slight form. "Ever since he was very small Sherlock suffered screaming fits. Scared our parents out of their minds. They weren't the most…affectionate people but they loved us and were terrified by his fits. It ultimately drove our father to alcohol and our mother to a number of nervous breakdowns. He would scream and sob for hours until we finally worked out how to stop them. When he was twelve and I was nineteen he was able to tell us what happened when he had these fits."  
   
"How young was he when he had the first one? Two? Five?" Anderson asked. He may not like Sherlock but what Mycroft was describing sounded horrible.   
   
Mycroft smiled sardonically. "Five days." he murmured. "Imagine. A tiny, five day old baby screaming and screaming and screaming."  
   
"That's awful." Lestrade breathed.  
   
Mycroft nodded. "Yes it was. I was the only one who had any idea of what was happening to him, having felt something similar." he sighed, tilting his head back to look up at the ceiling. "What we have, isn't just large intellect, it is the ability to look at something and take in every little detail. I have always been able to filter this to only accept what is necessary to see but Sherlock has always lacked that. He sees everything. He cannot help it and it has nearly driven him insane on many occasions. It…overloads his mind. I'm sure you may have heard him refer to his mind as a computer, deleting unnecessary information. But what happens when you put too much information into a computer?"  
   
"It crashes." Donovan said softly and Mycroft nodded.  
   
"Indeed. Except when he crashes, his mind sees everything and he cannot cope. Thus he is reduced to his screaming fits, the pain of the overload tearing his mind to shreds. He is constantly on the brink of insanity."   
   
"My god." Lestrade whispered.   
   
"He had his Bad days of course and we were able to help him through them but what he needs is a challenge, constant stimulus for his mind so as not to fall again."  
   
"So does he just fall asleep or something?" Anderson asked.   
   
Mycroft smirked. "He is not asleep." he removed his hand from his little brother's eyes and the other members of the room saw that Sherlock's eyes were half closed and glazed, every now and then they flickered, darting around the room.  
   
"He is a somewhat…catatonic state." Mycroft explained. "Very few can pull him from it after a fit." He paused, carding a hand through Sherlock's dark locks. "Have you all heard of his 'mind palace'?"   
   
Everyone nodded with varied degrees of understanding. "This is similar I suppose. The same near unresponsive state."  
   
"Is that - this - these…fits why he got into drugs?" Lestrade asked softly.   
   
Mycroft looked up at the DI slowly and evaluated his and everyone else's expressions before nodding slightly. "Mmm. Sherlock discovered drugs when he was sixteen. He would never have touched them except Mummy had died only a year before and he discovered that they silenced the…ah, noise in his mind. So he took it more and more until by the time he was twenty, he was well and truly addicted. I believe that's when you met him Mr Lestrade?" Lestrade nodded, remembering the beautiful, elegant, brilliant young man who could tell you your life story simply by looking at you. It had fractured his heart seeing this amazing young man so addicted to drugs. "I didn't approve of his drug taking but I could do nothing about it until he overdosed at twenty one. I then took him to hospital and then rehab and eventually got him clean. He hated me for it, but the only drugs he took again were cigarettes, coffee and chocolate."   
   
They fell silent again until Sherlock began to whimper again, his voice building up again and the thrashing starting up. Mycroft leaned over his brother, pressing their foreheads together and speaking soothingly in French until the whimpers stopped. "Make it stop Mye. Please, please make it stop." Sherlock sobbed.   
   
"Shh, shh Sherly." Mycroft whispered, abandoning French. "Calm down, remember what I taught you when you were four. Think of the ship. Can you see it? Can you feel the waves? Can you hear the sails flap in the breeze? Can you feel the wind in your hair?" he dug his fingers gently into the muscles of Sherlock's neck and pulled him up so that his face was pressed into Mycroft's neck and Sherlock nodded his head like his neck was too limp to hold it up.  
   
"I remember, Mye. Would I have been a good pirate?" he asked with a breathy laugh.  
   
Mycroft smiled down at his brother and pressed a kiss to his head. "Darling baby brother, you would have been the most fearsome pirate to sail the seven seas."   
   
Sherlock laughed again but it broke off into a moan and he buried his face in Mycroft's neck to hide his eyes. "My head, Mye, it hurts."  
   
"I know Sherly, I know. Just close your eyes and go to sleep. I'll stay with you. Come on baby brother, sleep." Sherlock tightened his grip on his elder brother and no one made a sound as he slowly went to sleep.  
   
The next hour or so were almost completely silent except for the sounds of Sherlock's fitful sleep and the shuffling of the rooms other occupants as they moved. Finally Mycroft nodded to John and together they carried Sherlock to his room with Lestrade hurrying ahead to open doors and pull back the covers.   
   
When they returned to the living room, Mycroft fixed them all with a piercing, menacing stare and said in a dangerous voice, "If I find out that a single word of this incident has even been thought of outside these walls, I will ensure that you deeply regret it. Understood?"  
   
They all nodded and not surprisingly none of them, not even Anderson or Donovan ever spoke of the incident.   
Not a single word.


End file.
